the short end of the stick here in terms of you know for me it's a systemic and a cultural problem i believe because from a young age you know women as girls are told you know play with dolls if you play sports you're a tomboy and that kind of as a stigma so from a young age boys play sports girls you know are told to do that and that's the problem i think where it all begins so you know stuff like basketball and you know the sports the popular ones tennis basketball hockey golf you know we see men dominating those because a lot of times from a young age they were unavailable to little girls to start playing either because they are seen as not as marketable and that's another problem where they're not marketed or promoted like they should be which gives you know men and the advantage from from the get go basically so oh yeah and yeah and you know and they're still trying to play catch up that way which is ridiculous because they're performing at the same level yes let me ask you this in sports journalism is there some because we've seen a lot of things happening whether it's related to rape gender things on the ground

is it is a quality happening in the ranks for female sports reporters or do they also struck just how many female sports minister step over to get this job i don't know if you really i mean. yeah it is sports journalism there's a big you know any quality there as well i mean just from you know there's ninety percent of sports editors who are men and that's you know that's amazing so you know women don't all say that all right you know i don't even care if that's actually so i mean that's the stigma again starting from the beginning from behind the scenes meredith vieira an example she was the first woman to host the olympics and that was only four years ago two thousand and fourteen so that's amazing and you know we haven't come very far in in that respect so regarding to women sports journalists they're at a disadvantage when they go to cover the games some are rejected from even entering the locker room because. sure there was an incident three years ago in the jaguars

an n.f.l. team in jacksonville three sports journalists who were females went to go a locker like they were allowed to and i'm sure who didn't know what he was doing rejected them from coming in and said no you're not supposed to be in here and so they were prevented from doing you know doing their job so it makes you it makes a really hard for there to be women sports in all this when they can't even do their job. and you know their names are says talking about it she's been called sideline barbie you know that is the thing you know it becomes about your logs where are the guys court of do you that i think with this is something that will keep talking about without him the show more if nothing else to let you guys know about great women sports and that i'm sorry and i'm sorry a time thank you so much steve for helping us kind of understand all this and and i think once again total little more. probably as we go to break court watchers don't forget to let us know what you think about topics we've covered on facebook and twitter see our full shows at our t.v. dot com coming up sean stone talks the new secretary of state might come pale future of syria with former cia officer cia officer and intelligence analyst philip

giraldi and then we celebrate the spring up to stay tuned for watching the. twenty eight team coverage we've signed one of the greatest kill people. but there was one more question by the way is going to be our coach. guys i know you on the us he's a huge star and a huge amount of pressure come out you have to be the center of the beach but tell me would you. go through all the great. you are the rock at the back nobody gets past you we need you to get down there we have to go. alone. and i'm really happy to join the team for the two thousand and thirteen world cup in russia. this special one come on so it took place. just read the

review the r.t. team's latest edition of make up as we go. to jersey look. winning is for the most probably last term is russia's president vladimir putin has six more years to fashion his legacy changed russia will we continue to check. the white house these days may often seem like a never ending game of musical chairs rumors of staff changes cabinet reshuffle and the abs and flows of the president's ever changing favor of playing to this administration ever since its first days and though this rumor mill is very often nothing more than that recently the broken clock didn't strike correctly seeing rex tillerson out as secretary of state and cia director mike pompei o tapped as his

replacement pump a zero with quite a contentious foreign policy record from his congressional tenure and his record as and as the rector of the nation's premier spy agency will no doubt take a notably different approach to diplomacy than as a political business executive predecessor how will those tectonic changes affect washington's policies abroad from the standoff with kim jong un to the quietly missed out metastasizing regime change campaign in syria for answers to these questions and more sean stone sat down earlier with former cia officer and intelligence analyst philip giraldi. phil thanks so much for joining me i want to start by asking you because you're a former cia man yourself what does it mean that president trump was appointed by pompei zero as the new secretary of state from being previously the head of the cia . well i think the appointment of pompei zero sends a prayer a fairly clear signal that trump in his next phase of governing is going to be

wanting to take a much harder line in a number of places trump has. basically already indicated that places like iran are very much being targeted but pompei all has it has gone beyond that and essentially has taken a very hard lines with russia and syria and of course has supported a very aggressive line with north korea. for thought but about syria because i know you've been writing about it as of late the american people may not even realize that we already have ground troops in syria what is the actual number at this point that we know of while the number of troops in syria is of course questionable the depends on how you count them the the number that keeps coming up is two thousand that's what the pentagon admits to that's what essential use what the government is

saying but there are also a large there is a large number of contractors in syria and nobody has ever come up with a number of them so i'm not sure whether we're talking about five thousand ten thousand or maybe even more than that and of course there's a fairly fluid battle line between iraq and syria since the fighting over there has originated with with going after isis which was in both places so that there's probably a high probability that these numbers are fluid that the troops move around and as you say the united states public really doesn't have very good insight into what's going on and indeed i would add that the u.s. congress doesn't have a very good insight either. and then it seems that president job actually wants to expand the number of troops within syria somewhere around thirty thousand troops guarding the sort of so-called northern border but who knows where they'll

all be operating what is his plan looking like well yeah the plan of of expanding operations in in syria has two aspects to it the first is they're talking about increasing the numbers and again the numbers seem to be loaded with contractors rather than actually serving soldiers. but we're talking about the numbers i've seen vary between thirty and sixty thousand now a lot of these sixty thousand might indeed be made up from the kurdish militias that are already under arms and being directed by the united states so these numbers these numbers are a bit elusive what seems to be the the plan is to more or less control the border area between syria and iraq and this would require kind of a buffer zone that would run all the way along the euphrates river and up into the

kurdish the dominator regions in the north turkey of course is going to have a say in this and turkey has already indicated that it's not willing to put up with any kurdish zone of control in the north so we're looking at a confrontation with turkey as well as with the syrian government. all the teams to be in contradiction to what president trump had said when he was campaigning of course he had been opposed to us interventionism and excessive use of our military abroad what are the interests that are at work here that are promoting the syrian war. that's an interesting question i mean i personally voted for donald trump because he was saying these things he was a strong critic of the iraq war and also to a certain extent of what was going on in afghanistan and basically committed himself to not expanding these useless wars in the middle east now all of

a sudden he's on board so. my conclusion has to be that he's been convinced by some of his advisors some of the people he talks to he talks to john bolton quite often he's clearly very heavily influenced by nikki haley at the u.n. . so there are a lot of people who are conservatives who essentially are interested for various reasons in. going to war. on a larger scale in syria and of course the danger in that is that it could easily bring russia well it seems that russia has certainly been involved the syrian war since twenty fifteen they were invited to support the assad government and yet what support was shocks me is that whenever the assad regime seems to be making progress in expanding its realm of the government within syria for example rolling back isis from iraq places like this they get hit with new allegations of chemical weapons

since most recently about a month ago what do you make of these that new recent allegations that assad has been using chemical weapons and basing the russians have been allowing it. well i believe that assad has not been using chemical weapons i think that nearly all of these charges against assad's regime as using them have been fake i think they've been essentially well if you look at the record and the almost all of these incidents of course take place in areas that are controlled by the so-called rebels and they have the ability to both carry out the attack and stage how it is viewed. it said something like the white helmet that are also being used as a propaganda tool when you control the turf when you control the media that comes out of it and you have a lot of fellow travelers in in the west and elsewhere that are essentially willing to to follow the line that this is an atrocity being carried out by the syrian

government that's what you're going to get so is the justification for the u.s. presence and troops in both iraq and syria still supposedly to fight isis. that's an interesting question the justification for fighting or for staying in syria has been changing regularly it was initially to fight isis then it became more a question of of supporting the shall we say revolutionaries or rebels who are against the al assad regime with the justification be that al assad was quote killing his own people and more recently it has become i think a push for the united states to have rebel relevancy in the peace talks that will eventually decide what syria is going to look like and of course but will also include regime change and getting rid of al assad so the the the just because you

keep shifting and we have nikki haley at the u.n. saying horrific things like we don't care what the rest of the world says but we have a right as americans to do whatever we want in syria i mean that's a ridiculous faves. yes syria reminds me a mixture it's a mixture of vietnam and afghanistan where on one hand you have the u.s. advisers that are on the ground as the early days of vietnam and again a lot of justification about this idea of fighting against a tyrant at that time it was the men and then in afghanistan where you're bringing in troops with the free syrian army being comprised of many foreign jihadists who've been brought in like the mujahideen war in the eighty's basically to overthrow sort of a russian friendly regime do you think that this ultimately will end in a will fashion or similar to afghanistan or vietnam. that's

a very good question it's a question of what kind of defeat will it. i suspected it's going to be have its own unique characteristic we've been on a trajectory downward or we since we started with afghanistan and iraq of course is the perfect example of how bad it can get the essential you all you've done is is weaken the one state in the middle east that was strong enough to resist iranian had yemeni iran not being a country friendly to us and we've basically turned that country into an ally of iran so that was a real dumb move i think that syria centrally will survive what we are doing to it and syria will then be a country that will be quite interested in doing mischief to get back from what we were doing to it so it's it's i think we would just kind of end at a certain point all of this will go away but it will be a tremendous disaster for the united states in terms of people killed by on both

sides and also the money that we wasted and the money the money could be catastrophic. journal is the latin word for spring equinox is latin for equal night the vernal equinox is the time right after day and night are of equal amounts of time and i march twentieth twenty eighteen vernal equinox will commence marking the beginning of spring and a time for a new beginning celebrations of life and rebirth at stonehenge each year druids which is an pagans alike meet at the site where for centuries nature worship or celebrating the arrival of spring by drinking dandelion and bird are cordials to cleanse the blood and in china the cold flowers have bloomed bringing tens of thousands of tourists to the area people gathering at the fields to dance and celebrate earth year or the second day of the second month on chinese on our calendar it is seen as the day the dragon raises its head and awaken springs. so whether you celebrate the vernal equinox but could sing your body dancing with

dragons and fields of flowers or spring cleaning your home it is the time of year when we honor the earth the warm breezes and the possibilities that bloom in a time of renewal because the spring them beauty is a joy forever i'll know this but i'm happy that spring is finally here for everyone places and with the warm out with the cold right now and now we can move on to complaining about how hot humid air from sun put it what are you tim up there all the other great thing too is we have to remember is that every change of season even if you live in a place where you don't really see the seasons change is that opportunity to start over and maybe we can see that in washington d.c. or other political couples around the world a good time to start over and all rather just have there are elections so let's see what the new year brings us right new summer we all are winter let's see what happens i'm ready can't wait oh alright well that is our show for today remember everyone in this world we are not told that we are loved up so i tell you all i love you i am a robot and on top

a lot of people are watching those hawks another great thing that i. well you know they were kind of adopted because we were called pirates for so long . they're in this small ball and sticks it hard to achieve anything. the little self to. be already ninety percent of the dark done and he won't become the. fifty. seven. they do it several times a day with a big lead now you get an idea i'm lying. we have to understand we cannot stories to just. be with this be used

for you. i'm doing this because i want the future world to future generations to have and enjoy the ocean we have. american minutes one is the melting pot and the second is the alger myth of the bootstrapping of anyone can succeed in america who works hard so this is a whole group of people all generation in america is saying that there is no melting pot we're not being assimilated there's no opportunities we can't live up so their response essentially is to go into conflict and this is a measure of. the far right and britain isn't just on the march it's taking violent month daughter's action i know what i

need to hit against you know again i see those who bemoans the nations which only used to split into which we feel different names how do you view the. complex web of british basher.

got him at thirteen wins a landslide victory in russia's twenty eighteen presidential election and securing a fourth term in the kremlin. wall international reaction to putin's victory ranges from the congratulations of world leaders such as hunger merkel through insults and criticism. yet others made a more joyful song than docs of the election coming to vote in traditional costumes dressed up as a danger. well for more on the russian election had to call the broader solution will be with you at the top of the hour but next it's crosstalk looking ahead to president putin's polls to oust president and if you're watching in the u.k.

or island it's talk show brenna gating. hello and welcome to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle winning his fourth and most probably last term is right. president vladimir putin has six more years to fashion his legacy how his putin changed russia how will he continue to change. cross talking russia's presidential election i'm joined by my guest mark sloboda he's an international affairs and security analyst we also have big he is a political analyst as well as a leading expert at the center for actual politics and of course we have. he is

a political analyst with sputnik international originally crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump anytime you want and i always appreciated. your take away from this election his reelection was obviously expected he got more percentage points than i think a lot of people were predicting not only that. just a few more than i predicted just a few facts that i think are important for us to understand first. more than in two thousand and twelve. in two thousand and twelve which is what sixty three percent of the vote forty five million russians voted for him this time he bought seventy six percent of the vote fifty five million russian voters voted for him why did it happen well between these two elections. in ukraine. crame year we had syria we are still western campaign against russia and russia gate to

gate. scandal now what scrape it all the olympics that's what i said there to fix it all don't forget i mean i think the wheat from of all that yesterday says it all he said i didn't plan to vote so he's a main force. i mean for outsiders looking in there are only two figures in the selection there was a lot of your putin obviously and. so check the socialite she got one point six. seven percent of the vote i mean she actually went to washington to campaign in washington d.c. and nobody accused. blinked. she went to live in d.c. and couldn't imagine. that imagine. an american candidate openly going to moscow and meeting. russian officials in the kremlin and having lunch with them and discussing the presidential election in the united states what with

this person he was that she got a lot of criticism here also she got a lot of cynicism but nowhere near what an american candidate would get over there and she was still looked at the part in that equates she was all that everywhere she wanted to be were shown on television are central to it was she given fair coverage it sure was if your leadership was given fair coverage and in fact after the election was over she recognized that he's old she said the country voted for fortune you know when when. the president gets seventy six percent he has political capital let's call it by any term that is that it's a landslide you know what does this say about the opposition because earlier you were talking about the spectrum of political thought in this election go ahead first of all i think the communists running a new candidate a strawberry farm business many runs

a strawberry farm commune with swift. yeah. he he did much better than the communists were expected to do even with putin's turnout he finished with twelve percent and i think that this shows that this was the real protest vote in russia. as it were and it's maybe a vote to be even harder on foreign policy but more for social benefit because we'll talk about foreign policy and what was the election result for crimea was it ninety three percent. voted for putin that's a word that that is a very significant not so surprising to me that is responsible for crimea for me as being able to vote in the russian elections to be there with the same time russia and the russian citizens living in ukraine were not allowed to vote they were blockaded from entering their own embassies by ukrainian police internationally there's you know there's a real commitment to democracy there go ahead well i think it's very interesting

you know the western reaction it's very important the context for the west the fact that russians in crimea voted for the president isn't except that it's a breach of international war they criticize the fact that russian citizens in ukraine could not vote because of the ukrainian police. the russian ambitious and why did the ukrainian police do it they said they were afraid. in two thousand and two thousand and fourteen well several dozen people were burned which was which was never fully investigated and no one was held or were killed and all the international who did of course because there videotapes are videotapes on you tube it gets even worse because they put the people that were the victims and. some of them who are going to see it by the judge in jail again when contacted churches let's say with the election mark what would it be. americans always say they vote

for bread and butter issues with their pocketbook here or russians any different. someone but i think there's an element of that too and i think it would not have had as high turnout as he did if the economy had turned in the last year. a little over a year ago he reached a deal with the saudis to end the oil price war and that helped raise the macro economy starting about eight months ago and only in the last three or four months did we see. could then trickle into the real economy and we saw some growth and some movement on salaries in russia and if that had happened i don't think putin would have gotten quite as dramatic a show of support as he did how much you know how much is foreign policy playing into the minds of the electorate here because i mean russia is in the news in a big way i mean they're told about it one of the things that's really quite remarkable is the. russian federal stations they take verbatim

lindsey graham's in the john mccain and everybody else that has something to say and they just let the rest of the russian viewer. absorb it themselves it would be right there and it's not just instagram or drinking when you look out of the british prime minister accusing russia of taking the u.k. or installed soil of wage and came it go at that was something you know of course people react because these are some of the most powerful people in the world today didn't you that you are waging war on it with no evidence you know when they're american you know the most powerful americans say that they're sure russia meddled in the reactions when they see russia will pay a price when the british parliament openly discuss a cyber attack against russia or of course for important she plays a role here but it's going to be with markov on think you know i think it was an interesting campaign because economic issues played

a role but not in the way the west would like them to and a lot of people can see the board or the russian cabinet of ministers as to rebuild to live to pro-west and to mourn interest and these people voted for gore didn't vote of confidence made it slogans was that i mean. if my if mike farm you know he is a. c.e.o. or were successful for me in moscow if my farm had been run by cauldrons we would be bankrupt in two or three days a lot of russians agree with. that because the consider a lot of it is from the central bank or the finance ministry you know when these to keep the russian economy open well i mean when you have cost out state such as i'm sorry i'm quoting. me you know when she called russia course that was state then i think we have the right to call a lot of the western. international organizations and it got very hostile and you'll give yourself open to that that's

a risk you put your actions on the standard to do things obviously there's a lot of criticism leveled at the economic section of the cabinet for the seem to it is these people were like them or not it is these people they are guaranteed russia's economy going through in a stable fashion through the period when massive massive sectoral sanctions sanctions were introduced against russia by the united states of the russian by the by the e.u. by by other nations so the russian central bank and the russian economy minister and other ministries that deal with this the proved themselves successful in keeping the russian economy stable in this tough period but another thing also that western leaders like to see in the including boris johnson the simply they come nothing against russian people the only against the russian government against bush you know who does all these things.